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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the subject in phenomenology was the source of all what?
(a) Meaning.
(b) Violence.
(c) Life.
(d) Oppression.

2. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."
(a) "Philosophy; laboratory."
(b) "Boudoir; laboratory."
(c) "Laboratory; boudoir."
(d) "Boudoir; system."

3. How do linguists describe the effect of language where "the texture, rhythm and resonance of words are in excess of their abstractable meaning."
(a) "A disproportion between one signifier for every other signified."
(b) "A disproportion between signifiers and signifieds."
(c) "A disproportion between two signifieds."
(d) "A disproportion between two signifiers."

4. Eagleton's goal in "Literary Theory: An Introduction" is to provide a comprehensive account of literary theory for whom?
(a) Those who have specialised knowledge of literary theory.
(b) Those who have some knowledge of literary theory.
(c) Those with extensive knowledge of literary theory.
(d) Those with little knowledge of literary theory.

5. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Criticism.
(b) Inventiveness.
(c) Literariness.
(d) Realism.

6. Eagleton provides the analogy of finding a "scrap of writing from a long-vanished civilization" to make what point about deciphering its meaning?
(a) That we would not know whether it was a piece of poetry or ordinary language.
(b) That we would be able to learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.
(c) That we would be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at its language.
(d) That we would be able to tell that it was a piece of poetry regardless of access to its language.

7. What is the name Edmund Husserl gave to his philosophical method?
(a) Hermeneutics.
(b) Phenomenology.
(c) New criticism.
(d) Reception theory.

8. According to Eagleton, who "harnessed this Romantic humanism to the cause of the working class" in the late nineteenth-century?
(a) William Morris.
(b) Samuel Coleridge.
(c) Percy Shelley.
(d) Lord Byron.

9. According to the Russian critic Roman Jakobson, literature represents "organized ______committed on ordinary _______."
(a) Religion; writing.
(b) Violence; speech.
(c) Protest; speech.
(d) Violence; people.

10. For Eagleton, E.D. Hirsch attempts to "offer a form of knowledge" that is what?
(a) Temporary.
(b) Titular.
(c) Timeless.
(d) Telling.

11. According to Eagleton, as the first industrialist capitalist nation, England becomes what kind of state?
(a) A wealthy state.
(b) A free state.
(c) A police state.
(d) A perfect state.

12. By the early 1930s, the study of English literature became what kind of pursuit?
(a) A singular narrowminded pursuit.
(b) A supremel uncivilized pursuit.
(c) A singular openminded pursuit.
(d) A supremely civilizing pursuit.

13. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."
(a) Pragmatic.
(b) Pendantic.
(c) Peculiar.
(d) Profound.

14. How far has the "theoretical revolution" spread according to Eagleton?
(a) Not beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.
(b) Within the inner circle of critics and readers.
(c) Far beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.
(d) To the outer circle of critics and readers.

15. According to Eagleton, what happens when literary theory becomes "turgidly unreadable"?
(a) "It is being true to the importance of its form."
(b) "It is being untrue to the importance of its form."
(c) "It is being true to its historical roots."
(d) "It is being untrue to its historical roots."

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what idea is "truly elitist" in literary studies?

2. According to Eagleton, eighteenth-century literature embodied more than social values, it also was an instrument for what?

3. According to Eagleton, Gibbon and the authors of Genesis share what in common?

4. What kind of language does Eagleton say people think of literature as?

5. What is the German word for how reality is not objective, but experienced and organized by an individual subject?

(see the answer keys)

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